


Good Measure

by Eggling



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27384094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggling/pseuds/Eggling
Summary: In all her months travelling with him, she had never once questioned why he had such a fondness for the things and people of the Earth. Now, alone with him on an alien planet, unimaginably far away from home, she wondered what humanity could possibly have to offer him.Polly wonders why the Doctor loves the Earth as much as he does.
Relationships: Second Doctor & Polly Wright
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Good Measure

**Author's Note:**

> on [tumblr](https://the--highlanders.tumblr.com/post/633949778782388224/good-measure).

“Tape measure.”

“Hm?”

“Tape measure, please, Polly!” The Doctor snapped the fingers of his outstretched hand against his palm.

“Oh!” Crouching down to rifle through the toolbox, Polly cast aside a wrench, several screwdrivers, and something that looked suspiciously like a yoyo before sitting back on her heels to examine the remaining tools. “Which one is the tape measure?” The Doctor mumbled something around the nails he held in his mouth. “What?”

Sighing heavily as if driven to some great extreme, the Doctor raised his hand to spit the nails out into his palm. “It’s the green one.”

“This one?”

“No, no -” The Doctor pushed past her, shoving the darker green strip of plastic out of her hands to snatch up a lime-green bundle. “ _This_ one.” He stretched it out across the box before him, muttering measurements to himself. “Yes, yes, that’ll do nicely.” Thrusting the tape measure back towards Polly, he began bundling the packages before him into the box. “We do have to get the fireworks over to the city hall in an hour, you know.”

“Mm.” Turning the tape measure over in her hands, Polly stretched it out to read the numbers that ran along it. It was wider than any tape measure she had seen on Earth, its measurements picked out not just in inches and centimetres but in a handful of other scales that she could only imagine were alien. One marked its intervals with tiny, intricate pictures, another with a gradient of colours, and a third bore no markings at all, only a long, reflective silver strip. “Hey, Doctor? How do you measure anything with this one?”

He gave the briefest of glances over his shoulder. “Which one?”

“This one.” She held the tape measure out to him, tapping the silver line – pain shot through her hand, lancing up her arm and making her fingers twitch – her mind buzzed with it, ricocheting from happiness to sadness to anger, but always laced with pain – the tape measure slipped to the floor, rustling as it fell, and she stumbled backwards with a cry. Raising her good hand shakily to her cheeks, she found them wet with tears. “What happened?”

Her exclamation had made the Doctor turn around fully, his coat all but puffing up in alarm. “Goodness, Polly – what happened?” She could only mumble crossly around the fingers she had stuck in her mouth, scowling down at the tape measure as pointedly as she could. “Oh, I see.” Bending to pick up the tape measure, the Doctor ran his thumb over the silver line. “Yes. This one can be rather hazardous to humans, if, ah – if you’re unprepared.”

Still nursing her stinging hand, Polly shuffled over to take a closer look at it. “Why is it on a tape measure?” She frowned, mulling over his words, her mind still sluggish and bruised. “ _Hazardous to humans_? But it’s fine for you?”

Of course, she reminded herself, she had known he was not human. That much had been obvious when he had changed his face. But he so rarely spoke of it that sometimes she wondered if he was trying to forget entirely that he was something else, and to hear him speak of it so openly sent a jolt of alarm down her spine.

For his part he seemed equally taken aback by the admission, opening his mouth and closing it again for a long moment before he finally spoke. “It’s an emotional form of measurement,” he said at last, his words clipped and careful. “You place the tape measure over something – like so – and you run your finger over the silver. There’s no numbers involved, just a feeling of the length.” He hummed to himself, running his finger up and down the silver line and smiling as though it were a small child bringing him a clumsy drawing. “A remarkably accurate way of measuring things, though most people can’t remember the information for very long.”

“Oh.” He was looking at her warmly, his eyes full of a gentle eagerness at the chance to explain something that he clearly thought was beautiful, but she could not help but feel small and clumsy in the face of it. In all her months travelling with him, she had never once questioned why he had such a fondness for the things and people of the Earth. Now, alone with him on an alien planet, unimaginably far away from home, she wondered what humanity could possibly have to offer him. “Why?”

“Well -” The Doctor floundered, flapping his hands against his sides. “Well, the Betablians – they’re the ones who invented this system, you know, terribly clever people – that’s the way they do things. They’re a very empathetic race. Where you have science, they have emotions.”

“That isn’t – that’s not what I meant.” She sighed, rubbing her fingers across her forehead, trying to bury the ache growing behind her eyes. If anything, the Doctor’s explanation had made her feel worse. “I mean – there’s all those ways of measuring things, on that tape measure, but you made your notes in centimetres. Why?”

“Oh. Oh, I see.” Half-turning away from her, the Doctor ran his thumb over the tape measure, drifting from the silver line towards the plainer marks of centimetres and inches. “Force of habit, I suppose. You humans, you travel so far – become so influential – your measurements aren’t used by everyone, but they are _known_ almost everywhere. It becomes something of an interstellar standard, you see, so it’s simply – ah – rather convenient.”

“But you’re not human,” Polly pressed on. The Doctor seemed almost surprised at her stating it so plainly, his eyes widening and his lips parting, and she suppressed a smile at the thought that he had believed he was being subtle. “You must know hundreds of ways to measure things – different, better ways. Why use ours?”

He hesitated for a little longer this time, the silence stretching out between them. Something in his face told Polly that she had hit a nerve, and she braced herself for a snappish retort, or at least a gentle change of topic.

“You’re right,” he said at last, startling her back into attentiveness. “There _are_ better systems. And I’m really very fond of many of them. I’ve used Betablian measurements to recalibrate the TARDIS, helped design a spaceship with Xi-i counting stones. But the Earth has been – I’m fond of you.” He said it so weakly, like he did not have the words for whatever he really wanted to say. “And my fondness for you was encouraged by someone very dear to me. It’s -” He swallowed thickly, falling silent again. “It’s for her, I suppose.”

Despite herself, Polly found the corner of her mouth twitching. “Who was she?”

The Doctor swatted her away, and she ducked his hand, still grinning. “She was – she was family, if you must know.”

His words were full of a carelessness that spoke of a deep reluctance to elaborate, but Polly could have sworn that the ground beneath her feet shuddered at the weight of the revelation. “You had a family?”

“No – oh – it was a long time ago.”

“Who was she?” She spoke the words more seriously this time, her mind racing. “Your daughter? Your sister?”

“Neither.”

“What was she like?”

“Polly.” A hint of sternness had entered the Doctor’s voice, and she stepped back, alarmed. “I didn’t mean to – I really ought to finish this.”

 _Conversation over_ , in other words. “Go on, then.” She flashed him a smile, and he smiled back at her, understanding the reassurance that she would not push further. “Shall I go and see if Ben and Jamie managed to get themselves a shuttle-ship?”

“Yes, yes, do.” The Doctor waved her away from him. “We don’t have long, now.”

“I’m going, I’m going.” She paused on her way out, one hand on the doorknob, watching him tinker around with the box. “Doctor?”

“Mm?”

“I think it’s sweet. That you’re holding onto things, for her. You must have loved her a lot.”

The Doctor glanced away from her, his cheeks a bashful shade of orange, but even from across the room she could tell his eyes were glazed over, half-lost in another time. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I did.”


End file.
